A
few years ago I received a phone call from Messner Management about 4
p.m. Pacific Standard Time on a Friday. They
were in need of a music video of "Sara B" for a fund-raising presentation
and had a very small budget. In the past I had bad experiences working
on projects with very little or no budget, but this guy found a weakness
of mine and convinced me to produce the digital music video. The only
challenge or should I say "challenges" were to write the script, shoot
the video and edit it within 72 hours in Chicago, IL. I live in Southern
California and hadn't heard the song.
Plus,
I had just started a new job and no longer had access to cameras or an
edit bay. Thanks to friends and production negotiating skills, I managed
to come up with a newly released Sony DCR VX1000 digital video camera,
a Power Mac 9500 with a Radius video capture card and was on the next
plane to Chicago. I convinced a former co-worker, Mr. Barajas, who owned
the Power Mac, to go with me.
We arrived in Chicago at 6 a.m. the next morning. We met with Bill (CEO
of Messner Management), listened to the CD and wrote the script over breakfast.
Fifteen hours later the shoot was done. Mr. Barajas and I were on the
first plane out of Chicago.
We arrived in California late in the afternoon. Tired, and with my Sundays
reserved for worship and family, I agreed to meet Mr. Barajas Monday after
my day job, to edit the footage. Now it's Monday evening and we're pushing
the envelope with the PowerMac 9500, 4 GB RAID AV drive, Adobe Premiere,
After Effects and Sound Edit 16. Tuesday, everything looks good, given
the conditions. I'm off to work and we just have to clean up the audio.
After work, I met with Barajas and discovered an audio problem. The Mac
wasn't capturing the best audio quality. Mr. Barajas then changed the
settings from 44MHz to 22MHz. Strangely, the audio was better, but still
not acceptable to my standards or to Mr. Messner's. Now we were two days
behind schedule and it seemed the Mac had let me down.
So, I requested the highest quality of the recording from the studio in
Chicago. They sent a second-generation recording on DAT. We captured it,
synched it with the video and the audio was better. The problem was not
in the Mac, it was in the original recording.
Unfortunately, we had to complete the video with the mediocre recording,
but the client loved the concept and visuals. The song was eventually
re-mixed for national distribution. Currently I own a PowerMac 8100 with
a Targa 2000 Pro Capture card and the same 4GB RAID AV drive we used to
produce "Sara B's" video. The Mac is still a great fully functional computer.
Although I keep it for sentimental value, I do use it to write scripts,
experiment with 2D/3D graphics and create interactive CDs.
We
all have stories to tell! Your successes, failures, just hard or
flashes of genius, we're interested in all your war stories. Come
on, share the wealth, us learn from your trailes and tribulations.
Send an email to [email protected]
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